


i'm beggin' my mind to stay here (don't break, don't break)

by crispyjenkins



Series: Crispy Writes [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Age Changes, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Farmer Obi-Wan raised by a Journeyman Protector, M/M, Mandalorian Culture, Mando'a, Obi-Wan is the Chosen One, Wookiee Culture, Zabraki Culture, for several peoples, of the decreasing the gap variety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:26:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27021970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crispyjenkins/pseuds/crispyjenkins
Summary: "Can you feel it?""Feel what?""Me.""Oh, the light thing? Of course I can, everyone aboveForce-nullcan feel it."
Relationships: Jango Fett/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: Crispy Writes [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1960120
Comments: 26
Kudos: 668





	i'm beggin' my mind to stay here (don't break, don't break)

**Author's Note:**

> **Translations:**  
>  _Mand’alor_ — “Sole ruler”, contended ruler of Mandalore.  
>  _Haar Gaanla_ — “The Chosen”, fan creation for a Mandalorian Chosen One myth  
>  _behot_ — an herb with a citrus taste and mildly stimulating properties, most often infused into shig, a Mandalorian beverage used similarly to caf  
>  _buir/e_ — “parent/s”, gender neutral   
> _Haat Mando’ad/e_ — lit. “true children of Mandalore”, True Mandalorians (slang shortened to _Haat'ad/e)_   
> _Nau’ika_ — “Little light”, nickname for this specific Obi, which becomes new Mando’a slang for open-flame lanterns  
>  _shabuir/e_ — an extreme insult, mostly accepted in fandom to be an insult of an individual’s ability to parent (from _buir),_ which is an intrinsic part of Mandalorian psyche and identity 
> 
> _Uifri —_ “Chosen”, Zabraki (found with [this translator](http://starwars.myrpg.org/coruscant_translator.php) )  
>  _Otwiyaddirm_ — name meaning “Choice”, “Freedom”, Xaczik (made by combining names with [this generator](https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/sw-wookiee-names.php); myth is my own)
> 
> Title from Bitter by Yoe Mase and sad alex

When Obi-Wan meets the Mand’alor on Bandomeer, wearing his failures like funeral garb, Jaster calls him _Haar Gaanla._ The Chosen.

Obi-Wan never makes it to the Agricorp outpost, he doesn’t even make it out of the spaceport; the moment he steps off the transport from the Temple, the Force all but takes over his feet, humming in happiness as it leads Obi-Wan further and further into the port, until it pulls him to a stop in front of a Nova Courier starship.

A Mandalorian without a helmet turns around from stocking his cargo hold, and knows from one look that there’s something not quite right about Obi-Wan, that the way the opalescent Force ripples around him is not the way it surrounds others. 

_“Haar Gaanla,”_ the man says, as the Force whispers _Mand’alor_ , as Obi-Wan says,

“I’m coming with you.”

Jaster lets him sleep in his bunk the whole way to Concord Dawn.

When Obi-Wan meets the Journeyman Protector Chalmun, the Wookiee stepping out of his terracotta dugout home on a farmstead that looks like it’s drowning in blooming behot, he calls Obi-Wan _Haar Gaanla._ The Chosen.

Obi-Wan smiles around his missing tooth, and calls him _buir_.

The prophecy of _The Chosen One_ is not specific to the Jedi, Chalmun has heard it all over the galaxy from as many peoples as he has bowcasters — which is to say, _a lot._ Mandalore has had their own prophecy from as far back as the Taung, and Obi-Wan doesn’t know what that means for him, somehow raised a Jedi first, but _Mando’ad_ now.

His first night as Chalmun’s foundling, he tells Obi-Wan the story of the Wookiee warrior that carried her people into the trees and showed them the sky, before giving them her bones to build the first treehouse. Her name, _Otwiyaddirm_ , came to mean freedom, choice, and has a variation in all Wookiee tongues. 

Chalmun tells him more stories like that while he teaches him how to farm and how to grow, how to care for the behot leaves that are their main income, but also the root vegetables planted at the bushes’ base. Master Tyvokka spoke _Shyriiwook_ when Obi-Wan was in the Temple, but Obi-Wan’s crèchemaster was one of his apprentices, and she taught their whole clan _Xaczik_ instead, partly just to piss her old master off.

Obi-Wan knows the Force likes to mess with him, lead him to believe one thing before spinning him 540º to another answer entirely, so he knows there is very little in his life that the Force does not have a hand in; that Chalmun speaks Xaczik rather than the far more common Shyriiwook? Well, it’s not as if Obi-Wan is surprised.

Before Jaster, Obi-Wan had only interacted with one Force user that was not a Jedi, a Zebraki woman that had come to study the architecture of the Coruscant Temple. Obi-Wan had snuck out of bed and was on the run from Master Oraruu when the Zabrak had found him and crouched in front of him — she called him _Uifri_ with a sort of fond awe, and walked him back to the crèche with an impossibly gentle hand in his. Knight Kolar told him later that the closest word in Basic is _Chosen_.

Master Plo had called him ‘a lantern in the Force’ when he first brought Obi-Wan to the temple, and the description stuck far into his initiate days. Quinlan would tease him about it, saying he ran a few degrees hotter than other humans, because to Quinlan, he was _warmth_ more than light.

So Obi-Wan isn’t unused to epithets and comparisons and whispered names in languages he doesn't speak, but he doesn’t know what to do with himself when his new _buir_ starts to affectionately call him Otwiyaddirm, just as often as he calls him _cub_.

It certainly confuses Jaster’s foundling the first few times the Mand’alor checks in on Obi-Wan and brings Jango along, who despite being a few years older than Obi-Wan and _Haat Mando’ad_ to boot, can’t pronounce Obi-Wan’s Xaczik name and instead just calls him _Nau’ika_. Little Light. 

Even after Jango learns Obi-Wan has a name in Basic, the nickname stays, because though his midichlorian count is lower than even Jaster’s, Jango can still see his light in the Force. Mando’a doesn’t have a word for the sorts of open-flame lanterns Master Plo had referred to, but Jaster says he thinks _Nau’ika_ suits them just fine. 

“Can you feel it?”

Jango looks up from the stone wash basin outside by the greenhouse, where Jaster had assigned the two of them to wash tubers for thirdmeal, but he finds Obi-Wan resolutely focussed on the blue tuber he’s scrubbing. He’s rolled the sleeves of his red linen shirt up past his elbows, arms toned from working the farmstead, and Jango has half a mind to be amused by Montross’ insistence that Journeyman Protectors and their clans simply can’t compete with Supercommandos — Montross has obviously never seen the size of the sacks of behot leaves Obi-Wan and Chalmun regularly sling from the barn to their speeder.

“Feel what?” Jango asks, while Obi-Wan works at a particularly stubborn spot of dirt with his reed scrubber. 

Obi-Wan doesn’t answer immediately, but his expression is relaxed and thoughtful, so Jango doesn’t press, just waits quietly at his side. He had grown in leaps and bounds under Chalmun’s careful rearing, strong and smart and kind, and he looks almost nothing like the tiny Jedi imp that Jango had met six years before. 

His hair is redder now, baked under Concord Dawn’s blue sun until it’s almost copper in the summers. Farmer-tanned skin is spattered with freckles and blemishes where he had been pale as a wampa in a snowdrift when Chalmun had first taken him in; Arla had been like that, too, and something in Jango _aches_.

“Me.”

Jango blinks, quickly returning to his own scrubbing when he realises he had been staring. “You? Oh, you mean the light thing?” Obi-Wan nods once. “Of course I can, _everyone above Force-null_ can.”

His relaxed expression tightens, lips pressed thin as the water in the basin moves preternaturally. “Everyone keeps saying that,” he says softly, “even the other Sensies here think I’m special.”

“Aren’t you?”

Obi-Wan shrugs, pushing his hair out of his face with the back of his wrist; it still leaves water running down his forehead, and Jango’s brain short circuits, just a little. “I don’t know. The Jedi certainly didn’t think so.”

“And we’re supposed to care what those _shabuire_ think?” Jango scoffs. “They must be even better at sticking their heads in the ground than I thought, if even the children couldn’t feel you.”

“Wouldn’t they have wanted me if they did?”

Ah, well, perhaps Jango should have expected this.

He can count the number of times Obi-Wan has talked about his time in the Temple on one hand, despite Jaster checking in on him every few months for the last six years. He’s said that his destiny was not with the Jedi in this iteration of the universe, that he knows the Force had not led him astray, and Jango knows he’s genuinely happy here with Chalmun and the Mando’ade, but he also understands that line of thought.

“Would you go back to them if they asked?”

Obi-Wan finally looks at him, wide-eyed. “What? Of course not.”

“Then does it matter knowing what they thought back then, when you don’t care what they think now?” Jango takes the tuber from Obi-Wan’s hand and drops it in the drying basket with the rest, before pulling the stone stopper from the bottom of the basin to drain the water into a pipe that would take it to the reprocessing tank to be reused in watering the fields. “I’m _Haat’ad_ , _Nau’ika_ : I know droidshit about the Force and Force users, and even less about this prophecy nonsense our _buire_ seem to think is important.” He hefts the basket onto his hip and waits for Obi-Wan to hang the scrubbers over the side of the basin to lead them back to the dugout house; he kicks open the door and holds it with his foot for Obi-Wan to duck past him. “I just know you don’t feel like anything else in the galaxy, that people will always want to take advantage of that power, and that you are far safer all the way out here than in the Core.”

Their conversation falls off as they remove their shoes to join Jaster and Chalmun in the kitchen, and though Obi-Wan doesn’t bring it up again that night –or any time after– Jango knows he thinks about it still.

When Jango’s starcruiser drops out of the sky over Concord Dawn, crashing into the behot fields and cutting a furrow of flying dirt and flowers right across the farmstead, Obi-Wan is already calling on the Force, oily-black and opalescent and _warm_ , to drag Jango from the wreckage. Obi-Wan wraps it heavy around the both of them, as he kneels in bloody, screaming mud with Jango’s head on his shoulder, as he holds his hand _heavy, warm, oil-slick_ against Jango’s throat until his dead pulse jumps underneath his palm. 

**Author's Note:**

> *my understanding is that blue suns supporting planet life is impossible, but i raise you: rule of cool. and does concord dawn even have a blue sun in disney or legends canon? i dunno, but you can’t stop me*
> 
> a prompt fill for an anon on my tumblr @/crispyjenkins! original prompt: "Chosen-One!Obi-Wan x Jango where Jaster finds Obi-Wan after he’s lost(somehow lmfao,, idk maybe connecting ships like a connecting flight?) on his was to bandomeer and adopted by a haat’mando’ade advisor of Jasters?"


End file.
